Enough is enough

from TV’s “crime porn” to endemic violence, the assault on women has to stop

Violent images of women onscreen fuel violence against women in society. Actress Doon Mackichan explains why she now has a zero-tolerance policy on taking part in any storylines that use violence against women as entertainment.

I wondered about starting this off with me entering with a face covered in made-up bruises. I wondered what your reaction might be. Would this be a more entertaining way of opening my talk. Would it grab your attention right from the beginning? Would you be intrigued? Or repulsed? Or would you be indifferent?

Amnesty International has described violence against women as “the greatest human rights scandal of our time”. I would like to look particularly at mainstream TV and film as guilty of feeding a culture that sees this violence as “entertainment”.

Kat Banyard in her inspirational book The Equality Illusion says:

Violence against women is a phenomenon that knows no boundaries: race, wealth, culture, nationality – it cuts across them all. And it comes in many forms, domestic violence and rape being the most prevalent. One in three women have been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused at some point in her life.”

Rape is a human rights violation and has been defined as a form of TORTURE by international criminal courts. I would argue that TV and film are exacerbating this issue with increasingly hardcore elements. Once seen, you can’t unsee it, and like abuse, it’s insidious, attacking women’s confidence and self-esteem.

Rashida Manjoo, a UN special rapporteur, wrote a 4,000 word diagnosis of gender inequality in Britain, looked among other things, at sexual violence in the media. She says: “Have I seen this level of culture in other countries? It certainly hasn’t been so ‘in your face’. I am sure it exists in other countries but it wasn’t so much and so pervasive.”

Perhaps she saw a large billboard on her way to work saying “PUSSY: The drink is pure, it's your mind that has a problem”. Maybe in the newsagents she was greeted by the image of a woman bending over in a thong next to the Financial Times, or, one shelf up, a porn magazine entitled “BARELY LEGAL” with what looks to be a 14-year-old girl on the front cover. Perhaps she was listening to the radio and heard Rihanna singing “I like it when it hurts” or “Blurred Lines” (“you know you want it”), or perhaps she had a peek at some TV drama and watched a girl being tortured and raped while Gillian Anderson has sex with her “boyfriend” and the two scenes intercut – edgy?! Challenging?! You bet!

It’s just the daily assault of sexism that leaves me, for one, profoundly disturbed. The so-called trickle-down effect of porn into our culture is now nothing less than a tsunami and I would argue that we’re in a state of emergency, or a human rights scandal as Amnesty International says – and boundaries of acceptability no longer exist.

At 21, my wake-up to feminism was sudden and powerful. I attended Manchester University to read drama and it was a hot bed of feminist activity. Women were angry, and not afraid to show it. There was less blogging and more marching – Reclaim the Night marches, picketing the Dave Alton abortion bill, women chaining themselves to newsagents to protest against porn on display (which I would urge anyone to carry on doing, though perhaps without handcuffs). Stickers on posters were commonplace, saying things like “This advert degrades women”. Graffiti regularly adorned large sexist billboard adverts. I was part of a group called “WOMEN AGAINST VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN” which successfully campaigned to have large billboard adverts on London Transport removed if they were seen as provocative or sexist to curb sexual assault on vulnerable women just trying to get home at night. This regulation no longer exists! The number of sexual assaults on London Underground and Overground rose to the highest level in 5 years in 2013. 15 per cent of women have experienced attacks or “unwarranted sexual behavior” on trains but 90 per cent are NOT reported!

We regularly wrote to the Advertising Standards Authority about advertising on billboards we felt to be degrading to women. We were a group of post-punk-women who may have been scantily clad but liberated and angry. I left university (with my family nickname of Milly Tant) and performed stand-up comedy focusing on gender issues and misogynistic rappers. This was the Eighties.

My first TV job asked me shave my legs and I refused. The cameras all zoomed in on my leg hairs and the 40-strong male crew treated me to a rendition of “Gillette, the best a man can get”. I unfortunately bumped into Jim Davidson in the corridor and he shouted “Not only has she got hairy legs, she’s wearing men’s shoes!” as he pointed at my Doc Martens.

My drama career seemed to peter out when I refused to be naked or show breasts when I didn’t think the show needed it. I was often made to feel like a prude.

I have been told by make-up artists about excellent plastic surgeons suitable for “refreshing” my face. Violence against women is also the knife and the needle. And by the way, I’m 51. And proud of it. Most actresses I know are will take 10 years off their ages, for fear it will stop them working. But I digress.

Natasha Walter has said: “Why is it that our entertainment seems to rely so much on the fascinated depiction of women’s scarred and bruised bodies?” Mainstream TV drama centres on plots involving female bodies in varying degrees of manipulation, often like meat on a slab. It then proceeds to reveal how it happened in gruesome, titillating detail. Whether the woman gets retribution is not the argument – it is the main part, often, of the stories that focus on a woman’s torture, pain, fear and suffering and I am SICK, SICK SICK to the death of it. Sick at heart. Like watching a tragedy played and replayed and replayed on primetime TV. Michael Winterbottom, director of a film called The Killer Inside Me, replied to critics that “It’s moral to make it unwatchable”. Well, one man’s morality is another man’s WANK.

Freeze-frame? You betcha! It’s a violation of women’s rights, NOT ART. His film pushed the assertion that women love violent men, so men felt powerful after them and more often than not, the women felt deflated, depressed and disempowered. More and more in these stories women are victims not heroes. Natasha Walter again: “Although noir films of the past had any number of murdered women in them, the ones we remember, those women had character, intelligence and dreams of their own before their life was snuffed out. Pretty underwear and bruised flesh has taken its place.” On TV what I call “crime porn” dominates our screens. Luther, Mayday, Ripper Street, The Fall, Silent Witness. . .

I profoundly regret my involvement in an ITV drama starring Robson Green called Wire in the Blood. Myself and the late Lou Gish were lesbian lovers and constantly needled – although I had been very clear about nudity ie; no breasts, bums etc – to go further by the director, often in front of the crew. I was certainly made to feel like a killjoy when I didn’t “drop the towel” in the sauna at the end of shot, or “brush her breast” with my hand. Far worse was the time Lou, who in the story was brutally murdered (of course), was sitting in make-up with only a towel around her waist as they applied cuts, bruises and blood all over her. I remember her feeling terrible – me holding her hand, and both of us shedding a tear. I wish I had never been a part of it. I never want to see another mutilated female corpse arranged in a titillating mess of limbs and underwear in my entire life. I have kept away from crime porn when asked to audition or be a part of these shows ever since. Recently, I was sent a request to be part a new police show: empowering, strong female Detective Inspector, a great cast, improvised – a total reworking of the old form. When I asked if any story lines involved violence against women, four out of the six episodes did. In these dramas women were objectified objects, inanimate pieces of flesh to be abused, raped, and killed. Just as sexual harassment can have a severe impact on women’s mental health – depression, post-traumatic stress disorder – I would argue that watching these stories causes the same feelings. Violent images persuade, and lead to anxiety and disempowerment.

Kat Banyard says: “There is little discussion about the aspects of our culture that encourage so many men to rape women.” Gird your loins for the statistics now. . .

Around 90,000 women are raped each year in theUK alone. That’s nearly 2,000 per week!! The rate of conviction is only 7 per cent. Two-thirds of rape allegations drop out during police investigations. Greater importance is given to motor vehicle crimes than is given to the victims of sexual assault. Two women a week in the UK are murdered by their partners or ex-partners.

The rise of the sex industry in the Eighties and Nineties mean porn and prostitution is respectable to an unprecedented degree in human history and hence the infiltration of the sex-industry into the work-place and media. We are in a culture that relentlessly sexualises women. Selling sex acts is like making a cappuccino. 75 per cent of prostitutes started selling sex acts before the age of 18 and were abused in childhood. 70 per cent in England have spent time in care. In a study of 110 men in Glasgow two-thirds had attitudes that were tolerant to rape. 22 per cent said that once they had paid,it wasn’t possible to rape a prostitute.

If porn is filmed prostitution, then our media is PORNIFIED and as porn has become more relentlessly violent and aggressive, the prevailing attitude is “they like it when it hurts”. It eroticises the dominance of men over women. Millions of women’s lives are caught up in stripping porn and prostitution.

What about actresses? They are often pushed further than they want to go. The recent lesbian film Blue is the Warmest Colour saw a seven-minute sex scene which took ten days to film. The girls said it was humiliating and that they felt like prostitutes.

Porn is everywhere. Girls say they feel embarrassed, awkward – does it affect their idea of sex? Shaving pubic hair, getting breast implants, requesting labial surgery seems to say yes. Girls may feel that they are expected to be treated as sex-objects, and that they just have to live with it. Explicit material is way too accessible and the extreme has become normal. Rape is OK. When I spoke to my daughter about this – she was about 16 at the time – it became clear that of her generation, who have been so exposed to so much hardcore material, quite a few of her peer group were saying they were “bisexual” for safety, as if they felt they were expected to perform some of what they had seen. The links in the media, and on TV, to abuse in the playground and then straight to domestic abuse is NOT DIFFICULT TO SEE. School is the most common setting for sexual harassment. Humiliating and degrading girls at an early age is commonplace, and sexist bullying an integral art of school life. Anti- sexism activist and filmmaker Byron Hurt says that feminism is the solution to countering the masochistic culture which is so prevalent amongst young people in London and leads to the terrifying knife crime that kills mostly black boys. “Men are drip-fed through media, religion, sport, family, culture, porn, prostitution and TV to devalue, exploit and stereotype women and girls. Men are in denial about the level of violence against women.”

When a casting website calls for actresses who are “the very definition of a slut”, we have a problem. What about “she climbs into a car, hitches up her skirt and rides him with nonchalant detachment”, or “please send picture of tongue so I can approve tongue length”, or “she is a heartless crone, nagging harridan and pussy whipper”, or “SHE IS SURPRISINGLY GOOD LOOKING FOR SUCH A STRONG WOMAN”. Directors or producers may argue “it’s a more liberal attitude to extreme sex-scenes” but often they aren’t sex scenes. It’s a woman being tortured, hit in the face, chained to a bed, raped, humiliated, burnt or knifed.

HOW FAR? How much further? The percentage of women directing, writing, producing and shooting films has been in decline since 1998. In Hollywood, only five per cent of directors are females, and 15 per cent of writers. If you have all white males working behind the scenes, then where are the people saying NO? Enough is enough? Oscar voters and the industry top brass are overhwhelmingly white, male, and middle-aged. The filmBridesmaids is a fluke, a one off, just like The Hurt Locker. It hasn’t encouraged a flurry of films starring or directed by women.

Sophie is an actress who has been raped twice in her four-year acting career so far. I asked her about this. The first character was very flirty: she wore a short dress and a lot of makeup. The scene comes about after a great deal of flirting with the character’s care worker and poses the question to the audience “was she asking for it?”. During the scene, the character says “no, stop it” repeatedly to no avail. Sophie said she felt weird. Nothing was shown , she was fully clothed, it was just “very uncomfortable, it didn’t feel empowering,” she says. “It was a private, personal, harrowing situation, manufactured.”

In the first film she did, she was eager to present herself as easy to work with. The director said: “You’ll be in bed but you won’t see anything” and true to his word it was, but the director still felt it appropriate to produce a small bottle of vodka in order to make Sophie feel more comfortable in the scene. Soon afterwards a montage of shots was requested which “required” Sophie to be in an apron with nothing underneath, which was shot from behind. The impression was that this character was perfect, and Sophie, who had been selected for the part, was ordered to wear copious amounts of makeup on her bum. They shaded it – “Can we have some more make-up please on this bum,” said the director. “I wish I hadn’t been so naïve as to think I could say no,” says Sophie.

The second film was a challenging role. The script was ballsy, interesting, gritty. She was fully aware of the rape and its importance in the film. There was no nudity clause so she was happy to accept it and they had four or five meetings over the nature of the scene and how they were going to do it, which made Sophie feel safe in accepting such a part. On the day stunt men were to barge through the opened door and carry Sophie’s character and another girl into a room. It was to be a gang-rape. The first sequence was the worst. We were told to struggle against the men carrying us, she explains, which we did and then they had their hands held behind their backs as they were pushed to their knees and had their faces held against the carpet.

“This for me was the worst thing I’ve ever done, at the end of the sequence when 'CUT' was called I instantly started crying because of the genuine adrenaline and not because of anything hurting,” she continues. “I am not that sensitive and consider myself a pretty strong person mentally, but when the director said ‘carry on’ I had to shout CUT again. The doctor came.Where does it hurt, he asked me. I was emotional, I was angry, I was overwhelmed, but I wasn’t hurt in any way.

“Then followed a scene in the bedroom, as I was held down spread-eagled by four guys and simply told to struggle and scream. My voice gave way after approximately 15 seconds, my throat hurt, I had absolutely nothing in me, I kept thinking, please cut, but there was no voice. I had absolutely no power whatsoever. I prided myself in being a strong person both mentally and physically but there was nothing left in me but the trust it would end in a minute. I was completely and utterly exhausted. I ask you, what is the difference between this and the real thing?”

We both cry at this point.

The other girl with Sophie had no lines in the film. “Why did she do it? I just don’t know.”

Sophie is hyper-aware of the casual sexism of parts sent her way now. “My perception of what is absolutely necessary for a part has been heightened. I will never play something that is thrown around around ever again.” Note she uses the word “something”. This is no small victory for me, this is the beginning of a change for the better.

Maybe when the doctor asked her on her on that set where it hurt she should have said “in my soul”.

Changing the mind of one actress on participating in a violent scene is a huge step. She will challenge her agent, other actors and directors not to see her as “repressed” or as a prude. This is one actress who has also had enough. [FUCK YEAH.]

So, challenging, edgy TV or film, or a human rights issue?

Rape isn’t entertainment, it’s a never-more pressing outrage that is not to be enjoyed with a glass of Merlot and a few cheese straws as you watch your “edgy” TV drama. There are more refuges, more sexual assaults and women are now seen as sex objects on an unprecedented scale.

Director Carrie Cracknall says: “The interconnectedness of the way women are represented in pornography, in music videos, in cinema, in advertising, in fashion which connects into the global beauty industry – insecurity about body image, younger and younger women going under the knife which connects into a dehumanised objectified perspective on women by men and other women and that must in some way lie at the heart of conversations we are having about domestic abuse, about rape, about sexual assault. Those things all sit together in one murky, complex bathtub.”

I think violent, on screen images of women fuel violence against women in society and I am now implementing zero tolerance on taking part in any storylines that involve violence against women, unless, of course it is with a radical feminist agenda. Let us rewrite the stories, let us bring back the heroines, let us ditch the vacant stereotypes and inanimate objects, let us educate women and men, empower them to find different subjects. As Rebecca Reilly-Cooper wrote in the New Statesman: “If I wanted to avoid anything that contained damaging depictions of women, I would have to live in a cave.”

If there were more writers like Nick Payne, perhaps she could come out of her cave.

Nick is a playwright and writer of National Theatre’s brilliant Blurred Linesat the Shed. Nick said after being part of this show: “As someone who writes plays with female roles, I cannot write shit that is damaging to women. Quite honestly I don’t think I’ll ever write a scene that involves rape or a violent act against a woman.”

There is a resolution in those words. I would urge anyone in the business of creating stories that may one day make it to screen and the people involved in producing those images – actors, directors to follow suit. As Banyard says: “Everyone has a crucial role to play in ending sexism. . .There are no quick fixes when it comes to social transformation.”

This is a small cry, a call to arms, to follow in Nick Payne’s footsteps. Anyone who has been awakened to the unprecedented violence against women in our culture, take your own personal steps and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Why I stopped watching porn

Ran Gavrieli at TEDxJaffa 2013

Vídeo de YouTube

Ran Gavrieli lives in Tel Aviv and studies gender at Tel Aviv University. He works with youth and adults all over the country in sex and gender studies and in building positive self image in a world inundated by sexual imagery with negative connotations.

Ran writes and lectures about emotional and physical safe sex; porn and porn-influenced cultural damages; gender and power relations; and sex and intimacy.

... & women fighting back in original ways

Japanese artist arrested for disseminating 3D-printing files of her vagina

While Megumi Igarashi's work usually involves humorous repurposing of female genitalia, her most recent project has fallen foul of the authorities in Japan.

Famously, associate justice of the US Supreme Court Potter Stewart refused to define "hard-core pornography" in the case of Jacobellis v Ohio - instead writing that "I know it when I see it". The case referred to 1958 French film Les Amants, and whether the state of Ohio was justified in banning a 1964 screening on the grounds that it was "obscene", and thus not protected by the First Amendment's free speech clause. Four justices agreed that it wasn't, but they also each disagreed about why it wasn't obscene.

The irony, of course, is that Stewart's plain-spoken judgement is both intuitive for any individual and yet also less than ideal for building a comprehensive legal framework. He's right that, for those who think there are limits on free expression, there's a line where it ends and titillation begins - but leaving the definition of that line as nothing more than a gut feeling is maybe the most apt example of how the law often struggles with the inherent

Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi now knows that well, after being arrested by Tokyo police for breaking that country's obscenity laws, as reported by Sankei Shimbun. Her crime? Emailing 30 people a digitised scan of her own vagina, for 3D-printing at home.

The 42-year-old, who goes under the professional name Rokudenashi-ko (roughly: "good-for-nothing kid"), has worked for years to "demystify" the vagina in her work as part of a wider project called "Deco-Man" (roughly: "decorated pussy"). Her website is hilarious - there are vagina-inspired t-shirts, toys, smartphone cases, dioramas and even action figures. She's saids he felt shamed for daring to say a slang word for vagina - "manko" - in public and on TV:

Why did I start making this kind of art pieces? That was because I had not seen pussy of others and worried too much about mine. I did not know what a pussy should look like at the same time I though mine is just abnormal. Manko, pussy, has been such a taboo in the Japanese society. Penis, on the other hand, has been used in illustrations and signed as a part of pop culture. But pussy has never been so cute.

Pussy has been thought to be obscene because it’s been overly hidden although it is just a part of women’s body. I wanted to make pussy more casual and pop. That’s how I came to make a pussy lampshade, a remote-controlled pussy car, a pussy accessary, a pussy smartphone case, and so on."

The crowning achievement was her "peach on the beach" the MK Boat, a full-sized kayak modelled on her own vagina:

Vídeo de YouTube

Using the Japanese crowdfunding website Campfire, she asked fans for ¥514,800 (£2,952), but eventually reached a full ¥1,000,000 (£5,735). As with similar sites like Kickstarter, she gave out rewards for those who had donated larger sums. For 30 donors, that meant a copy of the 3D scan of her vagina, sent out via email - and that act is what led to her arrest, with police citing it as the distribution of obscene materials as defined by a 1907 act. Essentially, she accepted money in exchange for pornography, albeit in an unusual format. Igarashi has defended herself, according to Kotaku, as saying: "I don't think this is obscene."

It's a case that exposes the inconsistency of definitions of "obscene". The 1907 act under which Igarashi has been charged specifically refers to any "person who distributes, sells or displays in public and obscene document, drawing or other objects", or "who possesses the same for the purpose of sale".

Critics have pointed out that, while Igarashi fell foul of the law because her project involved a data file containing instructions on how to print a copy of her vagina, the police appeared unconcerned that she sells products featuring vaginas on her website. It has also been attacked in light of recent events in Japan, which only outlawed possession of images of child abuse last monthafter years of domestic and international criticism - yet with a specific exception for cartoon depictions of children in sexually-explicit comics, computer games and movies.

This means that a woman digitising her own vagina constitutes an obscenity, but a drawing of a child being raped isn't. The difference, under Japanese law, appears to be because one involves the genitalia of an actual person, while the latter is fictional; this distinction is why, for example, Japan can be famous for a festival which features a six-foot penis being carried down the street while onlooks suck on penis-shaped lollipops, while simultaneously demanding that all genitalia in porn films are pixellated out. The issue appears to be not so much that nudity or titillation is what causes something to teeter over into obscenity - as might happen in the West - but simply the verifiable representation of a single person's genitalia, whether for pleasure or art.

According to AFP, Igarashi's lawyer has said she could face up to two years in prison or a fine of ¥2,500,00 (£14,340), while a Change.org petition demanding the charges be dropped currently has more than 13,000 signatures.

"Florence Rush, speaking in 1971 at a rape crisis conference, said to great acclaim and comprehension:

"That the sexual abuse of children, who are overwhelmingly female, by sexual offenders who are overwhelmingly male, is part and parcel of the male dominated society which overtly and covertly subjugates women."

"That the sexual molestation and abuse of female children is not regarded seriously by society, is winked at, rationalized and allowed to continue through a complex of customs and mores which applauds the sexual aggression and denies the female's pain, humiliation and outrage."

"That sexual abuse of children is permitted because it is an unspoken but prominent factor in socializing and preparing the female to accept a subordinate role; to feel guilty, ashamed, and to tolerate, through fear, the power exercised over her by men.

That the female's early sexual experiences prepare her to submit in later life to the adult forms of sexual abuse heaped on her by her boy friend, her lover, and her husband. In short, the sexual abuse of female children is a process of education which prepares them to become the wives and mothers of America."

From, Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Politics: What Happened When Women Said Incest

The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture

Compassion for self and compassion for others grow together and are connected; this means that men finding and recuperating the lost parts of themselves will heal everyone. If a lot of men grow up learning not to love their true selves, learning that their own healthy attachment needs (emotional safety, nurturance, connection, love, trust) are weak and wrong – that anyone’s attachment, or emotional safety, needs are weak and wrong – this can lead to two things.

1. They may be less able to experience women as whole people with intelligible needs and feelings (for autonomy, for emotional safety, for attunement, for trust).

2. They may be less able to make sense of their own needs for connection, transmuting them instead into distorted but more socially mirrored forms.

To heal rape culture, then, men build masculine nurturance skills: nurturance and recuperation of their true selves, and nurturance of the people of all genders around them.

I am discovering a secret, slowly: the men I know who are exceptionally nurturing lovers, fathers, coworkers, close friends to their friends, who know how to make people feel safe, have almost no outlets through which to learn or share this hardwon skill with other men.